YouGov profits sliding £4.7m down the poll

POLLING and research company YouGov slumped into the red yesterday as it paid the price for failing to predict the economic slowdown.

PUBLISHED: 00:00, Tue, Oct 13, 2009

The research company slumped into the red as it paid the price for not predicting economic slowdown

The company posted a £700,000 loss for the year to July, down from a £4 million profit last time, on underlying revenues down 3 per cent.

Chief executive Nadhim Zahawi said taking on extra staff in 2007 and 2008 in anticipation of higher revenue growth that did not come through had been the main cause.

He said: “In simple terms, we let our cost base get ahead of our income. The credit crunch came quite suddenly and work from investment banks looking into shopper behaviour fell away. But who did see the credit crunch coming?”

Zahawi said the company had cut almost 10 per cent of its staff in the period as part of a £2.5 million cost-cutting drive.

But he said the introduction of new products such as Recession Tracker and Debt Tracker to ­monitor how consumers coped with the downturn showed the ability of the firm to “be flexible and turn the engine and gain market share”.

The UK General Election would be a “great shop window” for YouGov’s new technology, he said.

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